Charlotte Makes Photos

…but in the end, there is only one lesson I would take from the Trans March this past Friday: I don’t always need to be making photos, even if the compulsion is there.

Sure, I could have listened to my first instinct to pack the roll of Ektacolor I purchased for the lower-light gathering. In fact, for the light and the movement of participating in a march, I should have!

Instead, for whatever reason, I decided that I would save it for later. It’s a curse of an expensive film. It sits in the fridge until it gets closer to expiry, waiting for the “right” occasion. Which, of course, never really comes (or if it does, well after expiry), and you’re just using it to use it on a normal walk…

Not that I’ve ever experienced such a thing…

What I really learned is that it took me until we were to leave for the march to make the decision of which film to use, and that it took me that long because I was only a little bit interested in making photos at all. When that’s the case, it most definitely shows.

So even though I gave myself a roll of dull photos with oodles of camera shake — having asked too much of a 400-speed film and portrait lens from 1969 — the compositions were off and my heart wasn’t in it.

Sure, I could say that the march was a bit lower energy than last year (it sure felt that way), that there were a few planning problems (most of us couldn’t hear the speakers, schedules were a bit more of a suggestion), and that there were fewer signs than anticipated (flags, yes. clever signs? seemed like a few), but that would be putting it all in the wrong place.

When we left the house, I was this >.< close to leaving the camera behind. I was most interested in seeing people I knew and being in a thousands-strong mass of trans people and their loved ones. I was most interested in feelings. I was most interested in conspicuously taking up space in the city streets. Space that many of us scurry through, at least some of the time. I was most interested in calling for all manners of justice. And I was most interested in ending at the park and seeing all manner of trans joy fuelled by free pizza, chatter, and a supportive community.

In other words, for once, I actually wanted to be present in a way that I am not often: without the intermediary of a viewfinder or a pentaprism. Without concern for available light or finding a frame. While I want photos — my photos — of transsexual life in my film storage binders, I also don’t want that to stand in the way of my actually living it either. I can’t always be a spectator and participant at the same time.

It’s possible that I will feel differently of next year’s march. Or not. I will know it when it comes around at the end of August 2027. If I feel the way I did on Friday, the camera stays at home. If I don’t, well, then I’ll make sure to prepare for the conditions.